Construction of Layered High-Energy Materials via Directional Hydrogen Bonding

Abstract

Energetic substances with layered crystal packing have been identified as the most promising next-generation high-energy materials (HEMs) due to their excellent insensitivity. The challenge, however, is how to design layered HEMs. In this study, a novel strategy called “acceptor–donor separation” was proposed to control the layer-by-layer stacking of energetic molecules through directional hydrogen boding: that is, a hydrogen bond donor and acceptor are located in different energetic segments and at least one of them has a conjugated planar structure, which will enable the energetic fragments to be infinitely extended in a two-dimensional plane to form a target layered structure. The experimental results showed that three exemplary substances designed by using this strategy possess the expected layered structures, which have been confirmed by single-crystal X-ray diffraction, demonstrating the robustness of this strategy. Moreover, the three as-synthesized HEMs all exhibit excellent insensitivity (impact sensitivity IS > 40 J; friction sensitivity FS > 360 N), affording safety far beyond those of the most powerful HEMs in use today. Especially, the hydroxylammonium energetic salts possess good detonation performance (detonation velocity D = 8924 m s–1; detonation pressure P = 36.9 GPa) comparable to that of 1,3,5-trinitro-1,3,5-triazine (RDX), one of the most powerful high explosives in use today.